The first salvo of the quartz watch revolution was fired in the last week of the 1960s. On December 25, in Tokyo, Seiko introduced the Astron, the world’s first quartz wristwatch. It was a limited edition of 100 gold-case watches, priced at ¥450,000, equivalent then to the cost of a Toyota Corolla. Its battery-powered movement featured a quartz oscillator with a frequency of 8,192 Hz, accurate to within five seconds a day.

Astron was the shot heard round the watch world. But it took a while for the revolutionaries to start really storming the barricades. Seiko and other pioneering watch producers (a few Swiss brands unveiled quartz analogs at the 1970 Basel Fair) needed time to perfect the new technology and begin producing watches in volume. Seiko, for example, didn’t introduce more Astrons until 1971.